ANN ARBOR ? The foundation for the next evolution of the Internet was laid Thursday when the US Energy Department announced a partnership with Internet2 that will create an optically-enhanced network to deliver data at higher speeds, with greater reliability and stronger security.
?Five or ten years from now, we expect the new technology we?re developing today to become the foundation for a much more powerful network,?? said Douglas Van Houweling, president and CEO of Internet2, a quasi public consortium of research universities and corporations.
?And has been the case throughout the history of Internet2, when we develop it, private companies throughout the world will develop products and services to reach out to the public.?
Certainly, with this new network?s capabilities, physicians in emergencies can carry out medical procedures remotely, Van Houweling said. Technicians can control robots working in hazardous places where people dare not tread. While corporations will be able to host business confabs with employees scattered around the world who come together in three-dimensional virtual conference rooms.
Van Houweling said the other reason why he?s so excited about the new collaboration is it is bringing together talent from the Energy Department and the nation?s research universities to focus in a coordinated way on developing solutions to the technology challenges the world faces.
?It?s a new kind of organizational collaboration,?? he said. ?It will allow us in the United States to take more of a leadership position internationally. Until we announced this new network, we were falling behind in advanced network architecture. The network we?re using for the joint effort is the most advanced in the world.?
Called ESnet4, the new network created through this partnership will initially operate on two dedicated 10 gigabit per second wavelengths on the over Internet2 and scale by one wavelength per year for the next four to five years to meet the needs of large-scale DOE projects, such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab.
ESnet, funded by DOE’s Office of Science and operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, connects more than 30 DOE laboratories and provides networking to more than 100,000 DOE laboratory scientists. It is also used by more than 18,000 researchers from universities, other government agencies and private industry.
Internet2 brings to the party more than five million users at 270 research and education institutions in the United States and also provides access to more than 80 international research networks.
The rest of the details disclose that the new ESnet4 infrastructure will be provided by Internet2 through its recently announced agreement with Level 3 Communications, which will provide the underlying bandwidth over a dedicated optical platform.
For more information, Internet2.Edu
